Supergirl - 'Red Faced' and 'Human for a Day'

Sam and Lucy Lane are dicks to Kryptonians

'Red Faced' sees the Woman of Steel confronting her own anger and double standards (again). After she intervenes in a road rage incident and ends up scaring a group of children with her strength, Max Lord steps up his campaign against her and Henshaw warns her that people don't hate and fear her and Superman because they have godlike power, but because they have all too human tempers.

As the episode continues Kara learns that James and Lucy are getting a place together and that James has invited Lucy to game night, at which it becomes obvious that the two of them have the kind of bond that she can never hope to have with a human. Cat's mother comes to town and immediately starts putting her down, leading Cat to round on Kara, and Lucy's dad - General Sam 'Not Thunderbolt, but that's a technicality' Lane - shows up to slag off James as not good enough for his little girl and force the DEO to assign Supergirl to take part in a test of a new military android named Red Tornado (which sounds like the nickname of a Cold War era Russian boxer.)

'I must break you.'

So, the point is that Supergirl is pretty steamed when she faces off against robo-Ivan Drago, and kicks seven bells out of it, despite the fact that it turns out to have been built specifically to murderise Kryptonians. Her beatdown triggers its self-preservation and stealth modes and Lane tells her she's responsible for unleashing an unstoppable killing machine on the public, because he's a colossal dickbag. In fact, you know what, Thunderbolt Ross is like, 'dude, you're a dick.'

Kara blows up at Cat, who takes her out to get drunk and explains to her that, yeah, it sucks, but as a woman she can never get mad. A guy can lash out and be respected for his passion; for a woman, it's career suicide. She advises Kara to work out what the anger is behind her anger, and to find an outlet. She fights Red Tornado again, but he distracts her by endangering civilians and escapes. She saves Lane's life in the incident, leading him to, again, tell her anyone his out of control robot hurts is on her head, because dick, and Henshaw to blow up at him for being an ungrateful, self-righteous ass.

Actually, that scene is very important. Kara and especially Alex are increasingly certain that Henshaw is up to something and may be implicated in the death of Alex's father, but there's a real moment when he suddenly has her back absolutely against Lane. Then she goes off and punches a car until she realises that at the core of it she's angry with her mother because she doesn't have a chance of a normal life.

'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.'

Alex approaches Max Lord, who is able to reveal that the robot's now-sacked inventor is remotely controlling it, leading to a two-pronged battle as Alex fights Dr Morrow and Supergirl fights the increasingly powerful and dangerous Red Tornado. Morrow is killed, but the robot becomes self-controlled (Alex says 'sentient', but that's a leap,) so Supergirl pulls out all the stops and blows it to hell with her heat vision.

Back at the office, Cat rounds on her mother for insulting Kara, but the moment is marred when Kara cuts her hand and actually bleeds.

Like fish, aliens need regular cleaning of their habitat, but you
can't just put the Master of the Faceless Hunters in a bag.

In 'Human for a Day' it emerges that in destroying Red Tornado Kara used a 'solar flare' (a relatively new thing only added to Superman's power set in the last year,) expending all of her stored solar energy and thus losing her powers for a time. Of course, this is when an earthquake strikes National City, at the very moment when the DEO are taking Jemm, Son of Saturn and 'Master of the Faceless Hunters' out of his telepathy-proof containment tank so it can be cleaned.

While Kara experiences a broken arm and helplessness for the first time - without her powers she can only stand by while people die - and Cat makes a broadcast urging people to be calm, Alex is holed up in the vault at the DEO where Kara's mother's hologram lives and Henshaw goes after Jemm. When his backup is taken out and he starts acting oddly, however, she determines to go after both Jemm and Henshaw. In part, she is driven by the knowledge that Henshaw went on a mission with her father from which only Henshaw returned in mysterious circumstances.

So, this scene had some drama.

Max Lord has another go at Supergirl - this time for not showing up - and after watching someone bleed out and a pep talk from James, Kara opts to try and do what she can without powers, confronting and talking down a looter despite knowing that a bullet would do horrible things to her as a human. In the wake of this, she accepts a comforting hug as a chance to get snuggly with James, only for Winn to walk in, having determined that perhaps her superpowers can be kickstarted with an adrenaline rush. There's a gas explosion, James gets heroic and, when he falls down a lift shaft, Kara's powers return.

Winn has a go at her because he's as tired of this love quadrangle as I am, and it's done in an interesting way. Winn is clearly jealous and a lot of his remarks are hurtful because of it, but he has a sound point that it's pretty cheap to sneak a cuddle in her vulnerability while Lucy is out of town, and only likely to get her more hurt. All in all, he comes off as a bit of a dick, but so long as he doesn't get on the nice guy high horse, we can get past that.

I am, it turns out, a huge Martian Manhunter fanboy.

Alex cuffs Henshaw to a pipe and tries to take down Jemm on her own. He turns out to be an unstoppable badass, but she is rescued at the last minute by Henshaw, who displays immense physical strength in the process. Later they talk and he reveals that he is an alien refugee who was tracked down by the real Henshaw and Jeremiah Danvers. When Danvers defended him, Henshaw killed him, but Jeremiah returned the favour. In return, the alien took Henshaw's identity and promised to protect Alex, hence sometimes keeping her out of missions. Then he takes on his natural form as the last son of Mars, J'onn J'onzz.

Eeeeeeee!

Supergirl continues to struggle a little with the balance between strong human drama and action, and a slightly ham-fisted feminism. It's the last of these that is the problem, sometimes being done well and sometimes - see especially Kara's role in the love polygon aspects - not so much. The fact that her search for a normal life is automatically assumed to be stymied by not being able to get a date is not a great start.

On the other hand, I really like that, having discussed the way that women aren't allowed to get angry, in the final fight with Red Tornado the series does allow Supergirl to get mad, Melissa Benoist roaring and snarling like a mad thing as Supergirl channels all of her fury into taking down what, slightly uncomfortably, they have just decided is a unique, sentient being. I'm not saying that Supergirl committed genocide, but... Anyway, my point is, look at that picture above. How often does a female lead get to look that furious?

On the flip side, the scene where she talks down the looter is also really good, highlighting the gentler side of her humanity and her ability to be the figure of hope that vigilantes can't. A female lead with multiple personality modes? Who'd a thunk.